South American country of Guyana is apparently looking at closing hundreds of Internet Cafes because of Voice services like Skype and Vonage. Apparently international calls are decreasing dramatically enough that the government is noticing a decrease in the amount of revenue generated from the taxes placed on these calls. Considering that roughly 16% Guyana's income is based on the telephone companies, it is easy to understand why the government would be concerned.

Who would have thought that Guyana would have such an International calling market to be able to affect the tax revenue of an entire country? At what point do we internet users draw the line? Separation and taxability of "Subservices", while they are at it why not tax for Faxes, or for the ability to order your burger from Burger King the way you want it.

Over the years several countries have attempted to block phone calls over the Internet because of taxation issues. Software that looks for VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) phone calls has been used in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and China. Fortunately here in the US, regulators have prohibited the blocking of Internet calls. This leads to the reason we don’t use any VOIP service. We feel it is safer to use chat based services and enable the Voice Option, since there are millions more chat sessions occurring versus VOIP sessions. Even though the Voice Option on Chat services could be using the same protocols as VOIP, until we get a chance to Drink About It, we are sticking to our preconceived notions.